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It's no Florida recount, but it's closer than Carl White and Patty Higgins or any other council candidate would want.

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New Brunswick’s recent municipal election was on the cutting edge of voting technology – but as columnist Peter Smith observes, technology can’t resolve all the problems in an area where accuracy matters more than speed.

On the night of the municipal elections, incumbent Saint John councillor Carl White won by one vote. But 24 hours later, he had lost by one vote.

Yes, sometimes every vote does count.

The problem appears to be a result of the new technology more than human error, unless you count deciding to rely on the technology in the first place as a human error. In the Saint John case in question, two special ballots - ones completed outside the polling station, in this case in a hospital or a nursing home - were rejected by the machines as spoiled and set aside by the elections workers. The next day they were examined by the returning officer, who ruled quite reasonably that though the portion of the ballot for mayor was spoiled on one and the wrong polling information was on another, the correctly completed council choices should be accepted. Both of these voters chose Ms. Higgins.

Other irregularities have surfaced. The questionable ballots weren't brought to the attention of the returning officer immediately. Some workers darkened ovals on a number of ballots so the machines could read them, which though it does seem like a common sense solution to a technical problem, it can still be seen as tampering with a ballot.

While perhaps these problems only occurred at one polling station, coincidentally the one with a controversial and still unsettled outcome, it seems likely that these problems may have occurred elsewhere and are likely to reoccur. In any case, sorting out these issues now is essential.

No one is questioning the integrity of the elections workers or the returning officer. Despite the irregularities - problems do occur, especially with new technology - everybody seems to have tried not only to make good decisions but have been honest about the decisions they made. This isn't an election in Zimbabwe. But it does echo the problems with the 2000 presidential election in Florida. The recount eight years ago was due to both a badly designed ballots and complications from the voting technology. After that contest, one unintentional Buchanan voter, speaking on TV about the infamous butterfly ballot, commented (and I'm paraphrasing): 'You don't understand, I work for NASA - I am a rocket scientist - and I thought I was voting for Gore.'

Our ballots may not have been badly designed, but the Florida problem with incompletely punched chads sounds like our problem with incompletely darkened ovals.

As columnist John Chilibeck has pointed out, questionable ballots should be examined by a judge, not darkened in by elections workers so the machine accepts them. It leaves the whole process open to criticism. Certainly the citizens who attempted to vote with this new system, who were either hospitalized or residents of a special care home, deserve to have their vote count. The message can't be that you risk losing your franchise if you are too sick or old to keep up with Elections NB's cutting edge technology.

The underlying question with technology during this election, just like in the Florida election, is what is the matter with marking an X on a piece of paper? Anyone who relies on any technology for anything knows that complications are foreseeable and at times unavoidable. What drives the goal of having faster, more complicated, voting technology?

It didn't lead to a bigger voter turnout, as predicted (turnout in fact dropped by four per cent), and though in some contests in brought in results a couple of hours faster, it certainly hasn't made things simpler. This isn't a neo-Luddite perspective; we implement new technology as we need to. What, precisely, is the need here?

Perhaps 19th century gunfighter Wyatt Earp can offer the best advice to election officials: "Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything."

There are plenty of drawbacks to putting your name on a ballot. People look closely into your background, people pressure you to champion their own interests, you become the object of gossip at coffee shops and around water coolers, and some people assume the worst of you. Given these disadvantages, it takes a lot of courage to offer to serve on council. The disadvantage Mr. White or Ms. Higgins probably didn't anticipate is this false start.

They are not the only ones looking for answers. There will always be close contests, and the lessons learned from this one will make future ones less problematic.

Peter T. Smith teaches English and psychology at Kennebecasis Valley High School and lives in Hampton. He can be reached by e-mail at ptsmith_tj@hotmail.com. His column appears on Tuesday.